Showing 1 - 6 of 6
Fact checkers get it wrong
Life, James Hein, Published on 13/09/2023
» First off, I have some follow-up news on an earlier story. The Australian fact checking group I mentioned being paid by Meta has been suspended for providing a series of "false" fact checks that turned out to be actually true. As I pointed out, many of the so-called fact checkers don't have any experience in the field they are apparently providing the check for. This will be particularly true in any politically charged area.
What would you do without internet?
Life, James Hein, Published on 12/04/2023
» India recently blocked all internet, phone and SMS access to the state of Punjab for four to five days as they search for a Sikh separatist. I had a friend who was there at the time and they told me how eerie it was to see no one on a phone for a few days. Someone would occasionally pull out the phone to see if service had returned but apart from that, there were no people talking loudly on phones in restaurants or on public transport. This impacted 27 million people, which is more than the population of Australia.
Seamless synchronicity
Life, James Hein, Published on 11/09/2019
» As I was walking to work thinking about this week's column, I did a quick self-inventory. I was listening to On Liberty by John Stuart Mill through my noise cancelling headphones. The audio was being sent by Bluetooth from my Samsung Galaxy S10 5G phone that I was also using to play a location-based game, Ingress. This was being fed my position by satellite and receiving information from the internet via my phone's data connection. Occasionally I would pull down the notification tab to see what was on for the day and who had tried to contact me via a number of social-media services.
Translating ear buds and builder robots
Life, James Hein, Published on 09/05/2018
» Let's face it, technology is cool. Google is claiming that they will have translating ear buds you can use when you travel that will allow you to understand almost any language, instantly. Yes, it does sound like something out of a sci-fi book and I think they should name them Babel fish, but that name was already "stolen" from The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy series in 2012 that later became Bing Translator. The good news is that first versions of these may be ready for tourists in the very near future.
Can’t hide your head in the Cloud
Life, James Hein, Published on 02/07/2014
» According to marketing hype, the Cloud is good for businesses, both small and large, and for social media (i.e. everyone). Microsoft, Amazon, Google and a whole bunch of others will sell you Cloud-based access with a wide range of options and plans. To be fair, there are a lot of businesses out there that don’t care where their data is kept. There are also banks, healthcare providers and a range of others subject to privacy and strict data protection laws that do care where and how their information is looked after. Since we are talking about the Cloud, your data could be held in countries that don’t care for such things, or those which have different rules on privacy. In that case, what could you do to stop them from accessing your data? Hint: not much at all.
The shape, and size, of things to come
Life, James Hein, Published on 09/10/2013
» When someone uses the word smartphone, most people these days probably automatically think of Apple or Samsung. This makes sense because between them they account for over half the world's devices in this category. Apple started the trend and in recent times Samsung has taken over and been leading ever since. Beyond the United States, Australia and Europe, the fastest growing markets are China, India and Brazil, all of which have their own increasingly popular brands. In China, for example, Samsung is the current leader, but numbers two and three are Lenovo and Yulong Coolpad _ I've never heard of the latter either although they released 48 models last year. Apple isn't even fourth with ZTE, Huawei and Xiaomi coming next on the list.